Libya: Fury in the Isolation Ward

• Share

(2 of 2)

Arafat's reply, in effect, was a very sarcastic "Thanks a lot!" He accused Gaddafi of failing to deliver on past promises of armed assistance. Had those unspecified promises been kept, said the P.L.O. chairman, "the enemy would not have dared to do what he has done." The Lebanon crisis and Arafat's conduct have increasingly provoked Gaddafi to back the more radical Palestinian group, George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Relations between Gaddafi's Libya and Saudi Arabia have always been bad, the archetypal revolutionary vs. the ultra-conservative monarchy. But just as each side seemed to be toning down its rhetoric and inching toward more normal relations, Gaddafi denounced King Fahd as "the pig of the Arabian peninsula" and a "filthy agent of the U.S." Fahd's latest crime, in Gaddafi's view, was to attempt to play mediator in Lebanon.

Libyan officials say that they and their leader are angry at the Soviet Union for limiting its role in the crisis to "words, empty words," and the Libyans are even angry at the Syrians, for not opening a "second front" against the Israelis.

Virtually the whole Arab world, said one top adviser to Gaddafi, "is behaving in a way very close to cowardice." If Libya had its way, all Arab states would unite in sending troops into Lebanon as well as into Syria to prevent the Israelis from invading there. Volunteers would open a new front against Israel from Jordan. There would be a total Arab oil boycott against the U.S., and U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib would be sent packing. The Libyans would also call on the Egyptian people "to destroy all bridges with Israel," meaning abrogate Camp David (a move that would probably send the Israelis back into the Sinai). It is just because Gaddafi has that kind of alternative in mind that he finds himself on the fringes of the Arab world and is likely to stay there.

As for the other war in the region, Gaddafi's wholehearted political support and military assistance to non-Arab Iran against Arab Iraq has complicated his claims to championing the cause of pan-Arabism. It has also made him more suspect than ever among the overwhelmingly Sunni majority, especially given widespread nervousness throughout the Middle East about the Ayatullah Khomeini's militant fanaticism.

Gaddafi was still smarting last week from another setback. He was scheduled to have been made chairman of the Organization of African Unity at a summit meeting in Tripoli. But enough leaders stayed away to deprive him of a quorum and of the vindication he coveted for his unabashedly radical brand of statesmanship.

— By Strobe Talbott/ Tripoli